Inside the Heritage building in downtown Jackson stands a miniature Christmas tree. Teddy bears line the tree’s bottom as if they were its protectors. White lights match the nine pairs of angel wings that decorate the tree, each pair of wings representing one of the nine children who have passed away from COVID-19 in Mississippi.
Landon Woodson had “always been healthy until Covid,” his mother insisted in a Sept. 23 Facebook post. But two days later, the North Pontotoc High School football player died of COVID-19 in a Memphis Children’s Hospital after suffering cardiac arrest, she wrote.
A tale of two school districts is playing out in and around the Mississippi capital city. As Jackson Public Schools become one of the first in the state to mandate COVID-19 vaccines or weekly testing for employees, students in the nearby suburban Rankin County School District will no longer be required to wear masks.
An eighth-grade girl died this morning in Raleigh, Miss., mere hours after testing positive for COVID-19. Multiple sources told the Mississippi Free Press that the student attended classes at the school most of the week, including Wednesday, before testing positive for COVID-19 at week’s end.
Hours after the worst report of new COVID-19 cases in the pandemic thus far, Gov. Tate Reeves gave Mississippi a full-throated endorsement of vaccinations—but offered inconsistent and hostile messaging on the subject of masks.
Only days into the semester, some school districts in South Mississippi are walking back their decision to make masking optional. Yesterday, the Lamar County School District announced that two of its schools, Oak Grove High School and Purvis High School, were shutting their doors on Monday and going all-virtual until Aug. 16 “due to the high transmission rate of COVID-19.”
Mississippians should return to wearing masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, especially in school settings, the Mississippi State Department of Health is warning. The brief relaxation of pandemic restrictions following the widespread availability of the vaccine has come to a close, broken under the weight of the incredibly infectious delta variant of coronavirus.
The Delta variant, coupled with low vaccination numbers, has since caused the pandemic to surge to levels not seen in the Magnolia State since January. The seven-day average for new cases is now up 752% since June 22, 2021. But Gov. Reeves spent the week traveling to Colorado and Florida.
Gov. Tate Reeves put an end to all pandemic guidelines outside of K-12 schools, banking on heavily depressed case counts and increasing vaccinations to protect Mississippians this summer.
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